The Daughter's Walk - Jane Kirkpatrick [36]
“You can come with me or stay,” she said.
Against my better judgment, I followed her, wishing later that I’d stayed right where I was. And yet I told myself, wrongly, it couldn’t get worse.
SIXTEEN
Nothing Left
We pressed against people crowding the city’s streets. “I’ll buy you that ceramic pot when we return,” Mama said. She pointed to a piece of pottery with a sunflower shiny beneath the glaze in the window of a store that sold only dishes. The piece was marked down, an after-season sale.
“Before or after we buy the train tickets?” I said.
“I didn’t have a present to give you for Christmas.” Her emotions simmered like a custard getting ready to jell.
“It would be nice,” I said. “It would remind me to keep looking up for the light. But don’t waste any money on it. Not now.”
“It will be a reminder of our success.”
“Mama—”
The man came out of nowhere, grabbed at the grip, knocking Mama down.
“What …?” she groaned.
“Stop! Stop that man!” I shouted while I tried to lift her up.
“Go after him, Clara!”
“I can’t leave you.”
“I’m fine. Just go!”
I pushed my way through the throngs of people dressed in their furs and finery, my heart pounding. He carried away everything we owned: the letters to Forest, our clippings, my sketches, our story, even what money we had left! I brushed people aside, bumping, shouting, “Stop! Stop him!”
But people opened for him, then turned to look at him run, closing behind him, making me throw them aside. Off balance now, my ankle throbbing, all taking time—no time, we were out of time.
He dipped past buildings and people and corners and the cars he ran in front of. I couldn’t gain on him. He disappeared the way a rock sinks to the bottom in a murky pond; one can’t see it even though it’s there. I bent over, hands on knees, gasping for breath. It was over. All of it. People nudged past me. No one stopped to ask why I cried. Everyone had a place to be. I guess I did too: back to my mother’s side.
“Did you find him?” Mama had a gash on her head, but someone had placed a handkerchief against it. Two women knelt beside her and helped her lean against the brick building. They moved away as I approached, and Mama thanked them. Dizzily, she reached for my hands. “Did you find him?” Her eyes searched mine like a lost child’s looking for hope.
Couldn’t she see? My hands were empty.
“I didn’t, Mama. He. The crowd closed around him. I did the best I could.”
“Of course you did. Of course.” She dropped my hands. “What will we do?”
“Go to the charity house and ask for fare home, Mama. We have to go home.”
“We’ll run a story of the robbery,” the editor of the World said when we arrived and Mama hurried out the story about the robbery. She held the handkerchief to her forehead. It had a good effect, though I knew that wasn’t why she did it. “Maybe the thief will take the money and dump your diary and personal things. Perhaps a good New Yorker will turn them in.”
“Tell them to keep the money. It’s the notes in my pocketbook that I need.”
“Mama.”
“Well, it is.” She turned to me. “We’ll have the sponsors’ award soon, but those notes, the clippings, your sketches. They’re all gone.”
The editor frowned. He had a face like a ferret, I noticed now: lean, eyes narrow and hard. “I wish you well with your search for the lost items,” he said, then saw us to the door.
We visited other newspaper offices to tell them our story, and the Herald editor said they’d run a sketch of the criminal as well. “Someone might have seen you and this robber on the street.” He waved for a young man to join us. The artist worked quickly, making us out to be caricatures of strong western women. He put a gun in my hand and knife in my mother’s, making myth of our effort. “We didn’t carry a knife,” I pointed out.
“It’s part of the romance,” Mama whispered.
“Life isn’t about romance,” I said when we got outside. The cold wind snapped at our cheeks as we hurried back to our room. “It’s about making good